


build a house and burn it down

by Princex_N



Series: making strange with one another [1]
Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Codependency, Coping, Disability, Everybody Lives, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Neurodiversity, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:48:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23718469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: Four stray animals with nowhere else to go. They make the good days enough because they have to be, but the bad days rise to smother all the same.
Relationships: Alex Kralie & Jay Merrick & Brian Thomas & Timothy "Tim" Wright, Jessica Locke & Everyone
Series: making strange with one another [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1711201
Comments: 6
Kudos: 37





	build a house and burn it down

**Author's Note:**

> title from [The Horse Flies' "Build A House and Burn It Down"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHQsTUN_5Jk)

Good days are hard to come by. 

Somehow the four of them muddle through, broken edges cutting deep against one another, but something stronger than the hurt binds them together, and some days it could almost be worth it. 

(The tentative baby bird of Brian's laughter spreading its wings in quiet halls, the steady warm press of bodies against one another in dark nights on the cheap mattress pressed into the corner of the living room, the slow quelling of the constant tremor in Jay's hands, the soft peace of shared meals, the cautious release of tension between Alex's shoulder blades, the soothing support of others who understand you, the hesitant humor in Tim's voice after days of not speaking.) 

(Sometimes. Not always. Not enough. Not ever. But somehow capable of being worth it.) 

(Four stray animals with nowhere else to go. They make the good days enough because they have to be, but the bad days rise to smother all the same.) 

Months are not distance enough to save them, and there's only so much to be done. The road to recovery is a journey they'll never reach the end of. They keep walking all the same.

Brian's body is broken bloody shards of bone and he knows that his mind is not much better. 

Not time enough to free Jay from his plastic bonds before a frantic chase down abandoned halls led to the crumbling floor beneath his feet, and somehow the agonizing tear of screams from his ragged throat had formed an anxious alliance that has yet to crumble. The sacrifice of one for the good of many, but sometimes Brian is not convinced of their deliverance or their trust. 

(They had hauled his broken corpse from the tattered floor and into the clean salvation of a white hospital ER but he was a wounded animal, lashing out and snarling. He had shrieked wordless protests and bit the hands that reached to help him until they had forced him unconscious and still to muzzle him.) 

He doesn't bite so easily anymore, the chemical coating of his own set of prescriptions on the back of his tongue is enough to soothe the static in his brain matter enough to think without the red electric haze sharpening the edges of perceived threats, but it doesn't keep the snarls off of his lips. Bared and gritted teeth as his aching body flinches from every movement in the corners of his blurry eyes, every voice of the liars ringing painful in his ears. The others try to help when he lets them get close enough, but the days he needs the most support are the same as the ones when paranoia strangles his voice in his throat and suspicion lights his eyes like animal lanterns. 

(The calm days are better, but are they? Close press of bodies against one another, laughter shared soft in quiet corners, the steady presence in knowing you are not alone. But is he just a rabid dog submitting compliant to his own muzzling? He never thinks so during the peace and comfort, but on days like these he's not so sure.) 

At least he's not alone in the self-destruction. 

(He doesn't know if that makes it better, but at least it's something more than before.) 

If Brian is a wounded dog, then Alex is a chained wolf. Convinced enough by Tim's pleas and Brian's agony and the steady swell of years of guilt to sheathe his claws and lashing anger, but still too prone to gnawing at his own limbs in a fool's attempts to escape his bonds. The anxious pacing of a caged predator and the snarling pain of working his lower jaw under the wire wrapped tight around his throat. 

He roams the cramped apartment and glares at open windows (none of them could stand the closeness of a treeline but the creature that lurks behind their eyes blends just as well on a crowded street corner), snarling curses and threats at anyone who strays too close. Alex wears hopelessness as well as he does inactivity, but there are no solutions to be found in this tentative truce, and not even the looming threat of eyeless stares has pushed him yet to shatter it. 

(He knows they're all waiting for when he will. He waits too. He thinks they'll all be waiting until the days they die - whether Alex is the one to bring it down upon their heads or not.) 

Sometimes it's Brian he gets along best with, on days like these. The two of them caged twins in an ill-fitting world, capable of tolerating the play bites that dig too deep and aiming matching suspicion at the others. Sometimes they tear each other apart, Alex's words gouging deep like blades and Brian's broken fists lashing with enough force to split skin until they have to be broken apart and separated before one of them kills the other (matching bloody grins as they're dragged into opposing corners of the room, and neither is sure who hopes for their own loss the most).

They are too different to ever mesh fully but too similar to separate, but on the days when all Alex can do is weep and grieve himself, Brian is the only one he trusts to watch his back. On the days when Brian is too pained to move but too animal to be helped, Alex is the only one willing to fight through the cursed protests and biting teeth to force him through his day. 

Broken edges that grate but are still made to work. 

Some days Jay can't bring himself to put the camera away. He knows the quiet rasp of spent tape lights adrenaline in the chests of the others, but the gnawing terror of the risk of loss outweighs the impulse to comfort and accommodate. He tries to keep it subtle, careful, contained, but they are all too aware of the skittish breaths and darting eyes that haunt him for it ever to escape their paranoid gazes. A rabbit among wild dogs, hunted and prey, and all of them have hurt each other but none of them forget that Jay was always the one most hesitant to bite back. Taller than Brian but still the skinnier one even after years of Brian's insufficient diet, and part of him resents the fact that they all know him weakest even if it means that they defer to him more often than not. 

(Sometimes he feels like a rabbit set loose in the enclosure, backed into a corner and facing down four snarling mouths, other times he knows who holds those three leashes. But the three of them never scared him as much as the fourth. They could beat him and choke him and kill him if they pleased, but _that thing_ just took and took whatever it desired until Jay was a hollow shell waiting to be filled with whatever unholy doctrine it upheld and that was more terrifying than anything that could be done to his body. He watches the old entries religiously just to make sure he hasn't forgotten, and tries not to think of the empty spaces in his brain where everything undocumented sits and rots - how much did he lose when he wasn't looking? There is no way of knowing any longer.) 

(He can't remember his parents' names.)

(He's not sure any of them can.)

He carries the camera and tucks its plastic eyes into corners of the apartment, complicit in the quiet agreement that the days of posting footage is over and done with, but unable to relinquish the habit as a whole. Obsessive eyes tracking over old footage, the quiet murmuring as he works to ensure that he remembers every second. The others tolerate it because he tolerates them in turn; the thick haze of Tim's chain smoking, the hollow snarl beneath Brian's empty eyes, the biting sting of Alex's screams. 

(But they do more than _tolerate_ , he knows. Three sets of staring eyes aimed outwards, guard dogs huddled in a circle around him, and Jay knows that their teeth won't protect him anymore than they can protect themselves, but the steady weight of their bodies against his sides, the insistent press of medication and food into his camera occupied hands, the constant roof over his head - he rests easier than he has in years.) 

Broken edges that grind against each other, but none of them break the chain because all of them know that they are better and safer together, even when it hurts. 

Tim is the worst when he tries to convince himself that he shouldn't be - a broken starving dog playing at being showroom clean. Years of coping in ways none of the others did has never made the game any easier, and Tim knows that they don't think of it so cleanly, and knows that he shouldn't either, but can't quite help himself. Tim was the one who chased Brian for answers until the floor collapsed, the one who begged over his shoulder in the quiet roar of tires over road as Alex struggled to keep Brian from twisting his spine worse, the one who returned to unleash Jay from the parody of safety in his home, the one who called his doctor desperate to fit in three emergency appointments with new patients while huddled in an ER waiting room. He's the one who dragged the four of them out of hell and into a small apartment with nothing but each other to depend on, so isn't it on him to hold it all together? 

Working long hours and multiple jobs because Brian still can't physically stand long enough to work, and Jay has never been good with interviews even before he started panicking at black suits and the inability to run, and Alex might have been the best liar out of all of them but his hair-trigger temper and ecstatic search for punishment means that he keeps getting fired for picking fights with whoever will take him up on the offers. Tim is good at lying like this, good at carefully presenting his resume and convincing a potential employer that the last job was one he left willingly, smothering coughs in his chest and smiling polite at endless customers. He's good at maintaining the lie until he can't, but it's better than most of them can do these days. Doesn't that make it his responsibility? 

Up until the hours turn to overtime turn to exhaustion turn to anxiety turn to missing doses turn to seizures in the hallways and waking up with pulled muscles and ringing ears and three sets of wary eyes waiting for the sign that will tell them who they're looking at. Until the hot press of responsibility weighs him down like anchors under his skin that hold him in bed for days on end, staring blank and empty into the hollow grey walls of the apartment and only accepting whatever food and medication is placed directly within reach - a chained dog too tired to even lick at the open sores. 

Fired again, and it's days of looking for somewhere new, picking and choosing from the long list of failed careers to guess at which will impress the next HR employee, hope that they offer insurance enough to help pay for all four of their prescriptions and the pale mockery of therapy appointments filled with lies because the truth is too outlandish to be understood and the medical alert systems all of them probably need - fall risks and seizure prone and creaking bones and public meltdowns and erratic behavior (please don't call the cops on us again, their white skin only carries them so far and none of them are willing to push their luck). 

Bared teeth and bloody noses, hours skipped in a matter of seconds, electric twist of muscles under his skin. He hates it and he thinks they hate him too, but they are always still there at the end of the day. Sweatshirts and laps tucked under his head to keep it from banging against hardwood, warm cloths and steady hands to wipe away the smears of blood and drool on his cheeks, the soft chirp of muffled alarms to remind them to eat and bring him whatever food and medication he won't get himself, the careful press of a lit cigarette into his shaking hands when he can't get up but the craving gets too much to breathe through. He waits for the day when they'll realize he's not worth the effort, but isn't sure it'll ever come - even if only because all four of them are waiting for their own day to arrive, for their own abandonment to be found. 

Broken edges that grate but still fit to work. 

The neighbors all hate them - blunt force against shared walls and screaming nightmares and shouting matches, but there's nothing left in them to care. There is no one outside of their small pack that matters any longer, sideways glances earned from coworkers and late night grocery store employees but each other are all they have and all they need. There is no one outside that could be brought in because no one understands them but _them_ and this matters more than almost anything. 

(Jessica is the one exception. The only stray animal let in through their door, a cat that comes and goes as it pleases. She visits when she can, brings whatever cash she can spare or whatever bills she can't cover and spends the morning or the afternoon or the occasional night. Trusts scissors into Tim's hands and asks him to cut her hair, follows Brian's detailed instructions in the kitchen he can't navigate on crutches and chairs, matches Alex's fervor in debates about nothing of consequence, ribs Jay sweetly enough to make him laugh.)

(Five alarms ring out together to prompt matching doses swallowed in unison, the extra chair at the table always left open for her, fitting their bodies like puzzle pieces on a crowded mattress. She always leaves unnerved, but somehow reassured; steadied in the knowledge that strange is not always the death sentence society likes to label it. Maybe one day the separation from the typical will dig too deep and she'll show up on their doorstep with her bags packed and will match their bared teeth with her own unsheathed claws - add her banging to the walls and her snarling to the chorus - but for now she's content to orbit their pack and only roam as close as she wishes, making it work because she has no more choice than they do.) 

It works because it has to. A shifting game of who can take the most heat and who needs to share the most weight. Post-It notes and alarms and checklists and quiet reminders; 'this is how to take care of ourselves' and 'this is how to be a normal person (or as close to it as we can manage anymore)' and 'this is how we keep from killing ourselves' and 'this is how we keep from killing each other', tackling time in weeks or days or hours or minutes or however small the pieces need to be before they're manageable. Catching stumbling bodies and seizing legs and holding each other through raging nightmares or dissociation hazes and dragging protesting forms into kitchens or bathrooms when the stagnation lasts too long. The rest of the world says that only the healthy can care for the sick, but who knows what the sick need more than the other trembling ill? They take care of one another because no one else is going to do it and they make their broken pieces fit because if they don't fit here then there is no where else to go. 

(Four trembling sets of eyes that watch each other instead of the shape at the ends of their hallways, helping one another hang black out curtains and tape down the corners, careful hands coaxing each other from the doors and windows, religious in their doses because there is only coping and the line that they balance is delicate gossamer and there is no cure and there is no fixing, but they can keep each other from tumbling back into its distorting hands because it's the best they can do, and maybe one day it won't be enough, but it will be for now because it has to be - there is no other choice.) 

Good days are hard to come by, but they find their way to them when they can, caring and being cared for and content enough in the knowledge that this is how happiness works for them now and it's still better than anything they thought they could get their hands on before. They make it through because they have to, because it's worth it, and they know it even on the days they can't believe it. 

(Maybe one day the glass will shatter, and the chains will snap, and they'll tear each other apart before anything else gets a chance to, maybe, but for now there is still air and something like peace, and even if it's only the calm before a storm, working for it will still have been worth it, it will be, they know.) 

**Author's Note:**

> hopefully the first of many 'not everybody dies' AUs that i'll be writing 
> 
> [my tumblr](http://www.princex-n.tumblr.com)


End file.
